For Zack Kopplin, it all started back in 2008 with the passing of the Louisiana Science Education Act. The bill made it considerably easier for teachers to introduce creationist textbooks into the classroom. Outraged, he wrote a research paper about it for a high school English class. Nearly five years later, the 19-year-old Kopplin has become one of the fiercest  and most feared  advocates for education reform in Louisiana. We recently spoke to him to learn more about how he's making a difference.

Science is merely the art of observation, of weights, measurements and hypothesis. It is in fact the lowest order of knowledge, metaphysics being of the highest.

Natural science can tell us nothing about anything it cannot see, touch, hear, etc. Nor can it tell us anything about events that occured before life, consciousness and time even existed. If it presumes to say something about these events it has encroached into metaphysics.

We have done this dance before and you and everyone else knows what I mean when I say creationist. I mean they think some things were created SPECIAL. Such a proposition is completely useless in terms of explaining or predicting the natural world. Why, what possible practical application do you suppose it has? Other than selling books and such to the cretarded?

103
posted on 01/17/2013 1:07:42 PM PST
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

"Hitler believed in fixed kinds and that Germans were created in the highest image of God. Creationism is only a prominent belief in America among the less educated."

Actually, Hitler strongly believed in evolution and that since in evolution some are perforce more evolved than others, equality of the races is illogical ....which squares entirely with Darwin's evolutionary ideas.

Hopefully your scientific research is more meticulous than your historical research.

>> The only thing I hear criticized is the ToE. When genetics is even mentioned, most peoples eyes just glaze over. <<

True, they never mention genetics by name, but the science they're criticizing because it was wrongly used/abused by NAZIs had ENTIRELY to do with genetics. Darwin's theory of evolution says nothing about recessive genes or hereditary diseases. Reading through "the Origin of Species" wouldn't give you any information about why a baby has blue eyes if both her parents have brown eyes, for example. I think the average person doesn't understand much about genetics. It's stuff like that why OJ Simpson got away with murder when they tried to explain DNA evidence to the jury and show how the DNA results proved a 99.99% likelihood that it was OJ's blood.

One freeper claimed creationists embrace "genetics", then cited an example that had nothing to do with with genetics, either (selective plant and animal breeding to produce better results, which has existed for thousands of years before anyone knew what genes were.) As I noted, it would be akin to blaming the periodic table for people using dynamite.

You know, you've just really set a new low for yourself and destroyed whatever little credibility you may have had among people who didn't know you any better.

You continue to exhibit a level of bias and bigotry that demonstrates you are completely incapable of being objective about anything. A real handicap for someone who claims to be a scientist. With that kind of attitude and inability to be more objective, your scientific work would be suspect and certainly anything you say about science is also suspect.

Most people get over calling others retards in 6th grade.

Grow up.

106
posted on 01/17/2013 1:46:35 PM PST
by metmom
(For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)

Well put; while evolutionists can mock creationists, they have no better explanation (that stands up to serious scrutiny).

I don’t mind discussing it with people who don’t agree with me, but the fact is that with current trends evolutionists will follow the dodo to extinction while creationists fill the Earth. Europe, the US, and Japan are probably the most evolved in technology, and all are disappearing secular societies being replaced by immigrants with a very different worldview.

I think you need to check your work. I’ve been out of college for 30 years, and they were telling us the Bohr model was not the best. Heck, my High School Chemistry teacher told us the Bohr was not right.

From Wikipedia:

The Bohr model is a relatively primitive model of the hydrogen atom, compared to the valence shell atom. ...[The Bohr model is] considered to be an obsolete scientific theory... the Bohr model is still commonly taught to introduce students to quantum mechanics, before moving on to the more accurate, but more complex, valence shell atom.

Oh, and by the way - I’m not strictly “less educated” as has been mentioned in a previous post. In this post-modern world, people think they can make up their own “truth”.

Problem is, that many of those “truths” do not, and cannot be shown to, line up with reality. You weren’t there. I wasn’t there. NEITHER of us knows what reality was. At least “creationists” like me don’t claim we know it, we just believe what God tells us. (HE was there.)

112
posted on 01/17/2013 2:15:03 PM PST
by HeadOn
(With my last breath, I will pull the lever against the liberals. NEVER GIVE UP.)

Been there, done it in seminary, along with extensive translation work from original languages.

As I said, you are promoting a human, false religion/cultic view. It isn’t Jewish - heck it is anti-Jewish. It isn’t Christian, heck, it’s anti-Christian. It isn’t the first time you’ve promoted anti-Christian views on FreeRepublic. It is just the most recent.

Science is not at all in conflict with my Christian faith, neither does it conflict with the faith of most Christians who have no use for creationism.... I do find it amusing how most are unable to make an argument for creationism without an ignorant assumption that anyone arguing against is an atheist.

Dear allmendream, these statements provoke questions. For openers, what do you mean by "my" Christian faith?

There is only One Christian faith, though it is true it gets refracted differently in minor ways by different confessions or denominations of the faith.

But it seems to me what all Christians believe in are the following: (1) There is One God, one utterly world-transcendent, extra-cosmic, eternal, indivisible divine Substance expressing to us as three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We believe that God the Father created all that exists, "on earth and in heaven." His act of Creation actualized His holy Word, in the Beginning  the Son of God, divine and eternal Logos Alpha to Omega, from the beginning to the end of created space and time.

The Lord's Act was purposeful, or goal-oriented. That is, there is instantly instantiated into the created universe an aspect of it that is purely teleological, or intended toward the fulfillment of an original divine Purpose that will be consummated at the End of this order of space and time, when humans and the world will be judged.

In such a light, we can understand how universal natural laws came into existence, and why they have such universal application and persistence in the natural world. [How could universal natural laws be rationally regarded as the result of an accidental, evolutionary development? In such a case, such natural laws could never be considered "universal," thus not naturally lawful.]

The Third Person, the Holy Spirit, can be likened to "God with us" (if we let Him), in that He primarily works to restore human souls to their created nature, in the likeness of their Father, through the Spirit, made possible by the Sacrifice of Christ Jesus.

These are basic statements that undergird my understanding of the Genesis account which, because it rings true to me both by reason and experience, is my fundamental cosmological view of the universe at macroscale.

Note that any purpose targeted to an end must involve guiding laws in between sufficient to produce the purposed, intended result. Which, if a result intended by God, cannot be defeased.

Now your scientific materialists and orthodox evolutionary theorists (I count you in that group, dear AMD) have no problem with admitting the existence of universal natural laws. The problem you have is that you cannot explain where such laws came from  which are still admitted as the essential criteria by which the world that we consciously engage in becomes intelligible to our minds.

Indeed, this particular set of thinkers has absolutely zero clue how life could arise in such a relentlessly inert material system, let alone mind. But obviously, such thinkers are alive, and they do have minds, or we wouldn't be hearing from them. How do they account for their own minds?

If they are merely random, evolutionary developments, and the exterior world is likewise a random evolutionary development, then where do we find the common Ground that can bring the human mind and the exterior natural world into sufficient correspondence such that we can say we "know" about the natural world, and can ascribe meaning to it?

In my theistic exposition so far, I have given short shrift to the soteriological significance of the Son of God, Jesus Christ. But understanding this, it seems to me, is the very foundation of a universal moral law, in addition to the merely physical laws of nature that Christ Logos embedded into the world of spatiotemporal Creation, in the Beginning.

In short, my belief is that both the natural and the moral (spiritual) laws find common Source in the Will of God the Father, as expressed and constantly projected into the created world by his Son, His Truth, the instrument of divine Will, via the Holy Spirit.

On this point, a contrast with Deism might be helpful. Deism, like Judaism, is a monotheistic religion. Its proponents believe that God created the universe. But they also believe that His creation consisted of a one-time implementation of one, single, perpetual-motion celestial "Machine" designed to infallibly run forever by its own internal resources. God built it; He wrote its program. Meanwhile, evidently He would have had to have created space and time in order to give His celestial machine scope within which to "run." Thereafter God, according to the Deist, declared His creation "good"; and stepped away from it forever more, never to engage with it again.

It is conventional to classify in this particular set of "celeste magnifique" or "machine model" thinkers as Baron Simon Laplace, Sir Isaac Newton, and Benjamin Franklin.

I gather Laplace had perfect confidence in "the scientific method" as the tool by which man can reliably learn anything and everything about the universe in which he lives. If Laplace is correct in his view, however, this relegates humans to the status of parts of a machine  while at the same time telling humans that they can envision the entire machine of which they are parts as if they stood completely outside of it, "looking down," as it were, from some "celestial" perspective that human beings simply cannot ever gain from the perspective of the viewpoint reduced to observations of physical nature alone.

As to Newton, he was very likely a monotheist, believing as he evidently did in a Creator God. He evidently thought the Christian conception of Three Persons as constituting the indivisible Substance of the Godhead was a totally unnecessary complication, on "Occam's Razor" grounds.

But then he did something really interesting: He suggested that given the machine-like qualities of the features of nature that his magnificent theory so well describes at all scales, sooner or later it is the very machine-like nature of existents that will generate errors over time. The accumulation of errors would be fatal given enough time, lest the Creator God step back into the picture to set things aright again. And Newton said that God actually does this. That He is "mediated" into human life and natural experience via what Newton called the sensorium Dei. Some folks of my acquaintance have associated this idea with the idea of a biological vacuum field.

Anyhoot, I'm just trying to ascertain whether we stand, you and I dear allmenmdream, on common ground.

In the past, you have tended to excoriate me as a "creationist," when all I really am is a humble Christian, a/k/a, an unrepented and unrepentable theist. I stand before the Glory of God, made so manifest to me, or I imagine to any other person with the eyes to see it (thanks be to the Holy Spirit!), so to marvel before the Beauty, Truth, and Goodness of what the Lord has wrought in His Creation, while being dumbfounded that He should give such special attention to a certain class of biological beings that He has made  that is, Man, created for divine Sonship from the Beginning.

Al Glory be to God!!! for you and me and everyone and everything else in His justly created order!

Thanks so much for sharing your views, dear AMD.

116
posted on 01/17/2013 2:45:45 PM PST
by betty boop
(We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. Â— William Blake)

Ready to read post 10 and admit you were wrong yet? Can your friends you cowardly ping to your posts expect the same admonishment when they refer to evilution or evolosers? Somehow I wouldn’t expect such consistancy from you. You have yet to surprise me favorably, maybe you should go back to bashing Catholics and claiming the Pope isn’t a Christian. Stick with what you are good at! ;)

117
posted on 01/17/2013 2:48:24 PM PST
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

ki2 only said that science geeks espoused much of what Nazism brought to the fore, not equating them as you did.

Can your friends you cowardly ping to your posts expect the same admonishment when they refer to evilution or evolosers?

Cowardly ping? When I did it so anyone could see it?

If I had done it cowardly, I would have private messaged them.

Fail......

Calling someone a loser does not fall to the level of calling someone a retard. Nice try at deflection but that fails as well. No matter who called someone what before, does that justify, in your non-objective thinking, that you can then call others names? How old are you? Twelve?

You have yet to surprise me favorably, maybe you should go back to bashing Catholics and claiming the Pope isnt a Christian. Stick with what you are good at! ;)

Where did I ever claim the pope wasn't a Christian? Provide the link. Or can we just presume that you're lying, demonstrating YOUR consistency?

119
posted on 01/17/2013 3:40:35 PM PST
by metmom
(For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore & do not submit again to a yoke of slavery)

Certainly, we all know what you mean. The prostitution of meaning and of human communication in this forum is your objective. Just as we all know what Goebbels meant when he opened his bigoted mouth.

Such a proposition is completely useless in terms of explaining or predicting the natural world. Why, what possible practical application do you suppose it has?

If we were to make inquiries of Scientists to the effect: Are all men created equal? Are they, then, endowed with unalienable rights? Do governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed? To what scientific protocol would these scientists turn to guide them in the experiments necessary for them to formulate their answer? To what peer-reviewed journals might we turn to view their findings?

What protocol violation or breach of scientific practice brought about the abrupt termination of the Tuskegee Experiment?

Without the concept freedom of inquiry would the Science you tout as the fount of all wisdom even exist? What of freedom of association, without which Scientists would not even have a forum on which they could gather and exchange ideas and information? Yet both are concepts of the Creationist ideals of our Founding Fathers.

I know of no Judeo-Christian who does not, as an article of faith, believe that God created Mankind and the Universe, and that the Judeo-Christian God is relevant to all human activities. Do you deny this?

When Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights (the most famous words since the words of Christ), he was speaking the thoughts of a whole people. God, the creator of Natural Law; God the giver of law to Man; the equality of all Men the gift of The Creator; unalienable rights the gift of The Creator. All the Founding Fathers make it undeniably clear that the Creationist philosophy of Judeo-Christianity is central to their public and private perspectives regarding liberty.

In the past I have urged you to look up the etymology of the word Creator (with a capital C), and its development following the printing of the KJV. But, you can not bring yourself to do that. Such an endeavour would be poison for you. It would be like Count Dracula viewing a Cross.

Do you believe that liberty is the design of nature? Do you believe that liberty is the direction of history? Do you believe that human fulfillment and excellence come in the responsible exercise of liberty? And do you believe that freedom is not for us alone? That it is the right and the capacity of all mankind?

The Constitution itself is the philosophical product of the Creationist beliefs expressed in the Declaration of Independence. For you this must be a cause for acute gastric distress. Take a Tums and learn to live with it.

It is the labors of Christian Western Civilization in the last two thousand years that has produced efforts to regulate the issues of the meaning of lawful war, the origins of war, the avarice and cruelty of war, the treatment of prisoners, when the right of conquest and the claiming of the spoils of war are just and when they are not, the rights of discovery and the treatment of native peoples, the securing of peace as the prime objective of war, questions of maritime law, redress for injuries, restitution of property and recompense for wrongs done, and the laws of embassy and envoys. No competing civilization, or philosophy, or scientific theory has even approached that accomplishment  ever.

From what experiment, or field study, or science textbook did any of these ideas come? Instead these ideas, many of our scientist friends say, are mere useless, nay even harmful, philosophical concepts, and so inferior therefore as to be unworthy of contemplation at all. And you apparently know of no practical application for any of them.

I often ping Godzilla to cultists. He enjoys watching the self-destruction that occurs. Neither Godzilla, nor I, nor any other Christian here needs help to instantly know you have been a consistent advocate of heresy.

As for you being a “bible-believing Christian”, sure. Whatever you say.

One need not assume God used magic to create in order to be a Christian.

I dont. But apparently you do. Or, do you anticipate no need for any information beyond what is to be gleamed from a science textbook?

You throw out accusations like a drunken cowboy shooting up the town on a Saturday night, but you are bereft of any support for any of them (the accusations).

If youll check the definitions of Creationism you will find that they cover quite a wide range of philosophical ideas involved in the Judeo-Christian tradition. What you cant stand is that they are an acid that dissolves your pretensions.

What causes you to gag ... what you cant stand ... is that Creationism is a fundamental tenet of Christianity and is the wellspring of Americas devotion to liberty for all mankind.

Who is the creator of the Universe, and why is Creator capitalized in the DoI? This has to be an endless nightmare for you.

Why are you so frightened of Creationism ... a philosophical tenet of Christianity ... that you have to resort to the destruction of all the norms and conventions of communication and meaning to calm your fear?

Sigh.... This kid is a retread of a dying culture already. What he exposits here in the name of "political correctness" has never been true in human experience, and never will be.

I just figure he's a kid on the make; and knows where the money is....

Given high academic credentials and a sufficient store of narcissism (and the concomitant moral blindness that regularly attends this sort of "juncture"), he just might make it big-time in 0bama's Brave New World.

132
posted on 01/17/2013 6:48:07 PM PST
by betty boop
(We are led to believe a lie when we see with, and not through the eye. Â— William Blake)

Unfortunately for them, the person who discovered modern genetics was a very devout Roman Catholic friar, so this goes against their talking points.

Unfortunately for your simple-minded propaganda, science can be hijacked by epistemological blinders (such as naturalistic atheism) as well as by politicians (Lysenkoism, gore-bull warming, feminism, enforced 'Darwinism').

Nothing in evolution has anything to do with one race being more evolved  than any other. Your ignorance of science is matched with your ignorance of history.

You're the poster who brought in the Nazis.

If you had actually read Mein Kampf (you know, written by that Hitler guy, who was commonly thought to be somewhat affiliated with Nazi politics and doctrine), you'd find that he believed in fixed kinds, because interbreeding of a higher and lower kind resulted in a hybrid weaker than the strong stock, which would be out-competed for survival, having no natural niche, and would thus die out...which seems to imply that Hitler was working off of the framework of natural selection, not special creation, eh?

I posted the direct quote once upon a time in response to someone (probably an atheist troll) who was busily orally pleasuring themselves by quote mining from Hitler to give Christians a bad name.

Apparently, they hadn't reckoned with the awesome capabilities of Google to find entire quotations in context.

Cheers!

136
posted on 01/17/2013 7:03:35 PM PST
by grey_whiskers
(The opinions are solely those of the author and are subject to change without notice.)

Wrong. I responded to post ten that brought up the Nazis. Hitler was a creationist who believed in fixed kinds, a fox will always be a fox, etc. He thought Germans were created in the highest image of God. But what arguments do creationists have other than ignorance lies and false equivalency?

140
posted on 01/17/2013 8:11:52 PM PST
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

Hitler was a creationist who believed in fixed kinds, a fox will always be a fox, etc. He thought Germans were created in the highest image of God. But what arguments do creationists have other than ignorance lies and false equivalency?

141
posted on 01/17/2013 8:13:24 PM PST
by allmendream
(Tea Party did not send GOP to D.C. to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)

bb, like you and A-G, I feel blessed to have escaped the confines of the "either-or" polarization that characterizes these "crevo" threads. And, by "escaped", I mean that I have been blessed to reach the point where I no longer feel bound by viewpoints in the list below -- although I was taught (and accepted) them for many years.

That our Creator is a bearded old man, and it is the physical body of man that is "in the image of God".

That the only reverent interpretation of Genesis is that I AM's six days of Creation were timed by single rotations of this (created) ball of mud -- even before it existed.

That there is some sort of conflation between Darwinian biological evolution and the cosmological evolution of God's entire created universe -- and that both concepts are the epitome of Godless evil.

That there is no need to explain how Abel and his siblings found spouses to fulfill the commandment, "Be fruitful and multiply."

That the genetic diversity of today's human population began only with a single man -- and a genetically identical woman (cloned from his flesh).

That, even though the scribe who wrote down -- and the primitive language he used -- had no concept of the terms, "galaxy" or "atom", a few sentences in Genesis -- as written -- (and human interpretations thereof) constitute a sufficient science text.

That there is some mantle of holiness and self-righteousness that rests on those who believe the above -- and that they will be rewarded for defending those beliefs

That, even though I am a born-again believer in Christ, and am convinced of the truth of Genesis and the entire Word, that my rejection of the above and my investigations as a physical scientist -- make me an evil blasphemer and an "atheist".

What a blessing to be free of those man-made "chains", and to be free to fully appreciate and attempt to understand ALL that our amazing God has provided!

And what a relief it is to be able to stand apart from either of the two polarized factions that inevitably infest these threads!

Heresy is like fire, it burns all around. It was the Orthodox Christian persecution of “heresy” that made Islam a worldwide religion. But for the persecution of the Ghassanids Mohammed’s religion would be a quaint tribal anachronism constrained to the Saudi Arabian peninsula.

Of course, it was the persecution of heresy that gave us America and religious tolerance; later clearly enumerated in the First Amendment.

Tragically, it was the persecution of Catholic’s as heretics that gave us our government school system. Something we’re suffering for today. So it’s a mixed bag.

As an aside, a chiropractor once told me that the pelvic region on blacks is most similar to that of monkeys, hence the more muscular gluteal areas on blacks.

I wasn’t interested in that at the time as I don’t see people that way, but your comment reminded me of what he said. Do you know if he was right or wrong? I’d like to know whether it can be refuted or is correct.

When Moses returned from speaking with God and receiving, by the finger of God, the 10 Commandments was it the establishment of a new law from God or simply the reestablishment of an old one?

Were idolatry, adultery and murder not sinful and/or even unlawful until Moses arrived with the 10 Commandments to set Israel straight?

What religion were the Hebrews practicing from Adam down to Moses? How did they manage a religion without a functioning priesthood? a written Bible? How did they repent and atone for their sins before Moses? Who lead them prior to Moses?

I’m asking you as a seminary-trained scholar, erudite in the original languages of the Bible. I’m not being facetious. I really want to know. It may change my life.

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